By Joe Rankin Predominantly forested has been the steady state of Maine’s landscape for the vast majority of the last 10,000 years. In fact, Maine is the most forested state in the nation—about 90 percent. This forest has provided game, fish, and medicine to Indigenous Peoples since before recorded history. European settlers arriving to colonize…
The party was eating lunch on a high rimrock when they saw the mother wolf come out of the river, shake off the water, and greet her pups. They greeted the happy scene with a fusillade of rifle fire — wasn’t it always this way? — then scrambled down to view the carnage. “We reached…
There’s something about the winter woods — the profound silence, the sheer whiteness. Snow whispering through the branches of the firs or slanting sunlight. The, well, purity and profound timelessness of it. But that’s our human perception. Far from being a place caught out of time, the winter woods are a happening neighborhood. It may…
By JOE RANKIN There is something about big trees that stirs up a feeling of awe in us. And when those trees grow together in an old growth forest, the feeling is magnified. We drop our hubris and can see time on a different level, and the slow workings of nature. Native Americans cleared…
By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future writer Quickly now. This is a quiz. What is the most common tree species in Maine? You might have said pine. It is, after all the Pine Tree State. Or the iconic white birch, perhaps. But you’d be wrong. The most common tree in the state is…
Erik Carlson remembers exactly where he was when he got the idea of getting into the wood pellet manufacturing business. It was September of 2015 and he was emptying a bag of pellets into the stove at his home. He looked at the bag and noticed that the pellets were made in — Canada. Canada?…
It’s safe to say that things have changed since the 1970s and 1980s, when the spruce budworm last ravaged the northern Maine woods. The forest has changed hands, some parcels many times. The state’s woods products and paper industries have suffered severe blows — mills have closed and thousands of jobs evaporated. Then, there is…
By Joe Rankin, published August 2016 Much of the southern half of Maine is dry. Really dry. Lawns brown. Gardens struggling. Wells drying up. Things are bad on the rainfall front and in early August the forecasts weren’t looking good for rain. The U.S. Drought Monitor for Aug. 9 said the southern tip of Maine…
Brett Mitchell has a vested interest in keeping tabs on the population of spruce budworm moths — he and his son own a 45-acre Christmas tree farm — 45,000 balsam fir trees — in St. Agatha at the northern tip of Maine. So, when he heard about a program looking for would-be citizen scientists to put…
By JOE RANKIN You’re in a store, say, and you look around you at the other patrons. Can you tell who is healthy? For a few, maybe. For most, probably not. Light in the forest (Photo: Rankin file)Things are similar for a forest. Just look at the trees and it might be hard to tell…
